The Forum was inaugurated by Javier Arriola, Director of the Northern Region of Iberdrola; Francisco Perucho, president of AFEC; and Mikel Amundarain, Deputy Minister of Industry of the Basque Government. In their opening remarks, they emphasized the importance of heat pump technology in achieving the goals of energy transition.

Following this, a series of presentations on the growth of the heat pump sector began. Marta San Román, Director of AFEC, provided an overview of the market's evolution, discussed the different segments that make up the industrial fabric of heat pumps, and reviewed the latest legislative updates within which this value chain will operate. Samuel Perez, Responsible for Hydrogen and Heat at Iberdrola, delved into the electrification potential of residential heat demand and analyzed the competitiveness and benefits of heat pump technology. Asier Maiztegi, Director of Business Development for Technalia's Decarbonization division, focused his presentation on the potential application of heat pumps for industrial process heating, describing the main technological challenges to reach temperatures above 140°C.

After a coffee break where attendees had the opportunity to network, the roundtable "Reindustrialization around the value chain of heat pumps" began, moderated by Maite Ruffo, Director of caloryfrio.com. Alongside Jon Fernandez, Project Manager for Industry Decarbonization at the Energy Cluster, participants included Cristina Oyón, Director of Technology, Innovation, and Sustainability at SPRI; Cristóbal Sánchez, Secretary General of Industry and Mines of the Andalusian Government; Maialen Oregi, Market Director and Project Manager of the Eraikune Cluster; and Francisco Perucho, president of AFEC.

During the discussion, the speakers addressed the size of the opportunity, within the framework of the energy transition, for the deployment of heat pumps in both the building and industrial sectors. They analyzed the main barriers to this deployment, reflected on the need to establish alliances to capitalize on synergies among the different agents in the value chain, and debated the necessary policies to boost the local industry.

In their interventions, the Energy Cluster described the intensive promotion work they carry out in each of their 8 Sectorial Forums as a fundamental mechanism for launching collaborative technological development projects, working groups focused on a specific identified and shared challenge, etc., in which the Cluster is particularly active. They explained that the goal now is to replicate this dynamic, which has yielded such good results in other Sectorial Forums or value chains, in the new INDUSTRY DECARBONIZATION SECTORIAL FORUM that is being launched to boost the development of value chains for different decarbonization technologies or solutions.

They also emphasized the "DCARTECH" alliance, signed by the Energy Cluster with the associations representing the most intensive industries in consumption in the Basque Country (Aclima, AFV, Siderex, and ClusterPapel) with the aim of promoting collaboration among companies from different industrial sectors in the field of decarbonization. They highlighted the importance of coordinating this alliance with the "NET-ZERO BASQUE INDUSTRIAL SUPERCLUSTER" initiative, led by SPRI together with Iberdrola and Petronor, in which the five clusters that make up the DCARTECH alliance also collaborate.

Finally, they highlighted the BEROA+ project, approved in Phase I of the 2023 Hazitek Program by SPRI-Basque Government and pending Phase II resolution, as an example of a collaborative technological development project that the new Sectorial Forum for Industrial Decarbonization aims to promote. It is a project, led by Tamoin and involving 10 companies, whose objective is to research high-temperature heat pump technologies and heat transformer absorption for the industrial valorization of low-temperature residual thermal streams.